The Parish

by Alice Taylor

  It was interesting to watch the gardening fraternity. There were mothers and daughters both equally interested; mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law who had formed a common bond; couples young and old with both of them into gardening; and other couples where one—usually the man—was just dragged along. But some men were deeply interested and this was the case with one who walked with me around the garden and introduced me to some of my own plants. When we came to one corner to which I had given the “bum’s rush”, he surveyed it sadly.

  “Ah! you could have done a bit better there now,” he protested. He was right, and he said it in such a kindly way that there was no room for offence.

  Another man who had obviously been dragged in by his wife walked around at first looking a bit uneasy. Then he met some of his neighbours and settled down. When I encountered him strolling around a few hours later, he told me, “This is a grand place you have here, a bit like a haggard.”

  One lady was heard remarking to her companion as she left, “Yerra, mine own place is just as good. Sure there isn’t head nor tail to this place.”

  Uncle Jacky, I thought, would have loved that comment.

  Saturday was a busy day but nothing compared to Sunday when the people absolutely poured in; at one stage, you could not see the garden for people. Prior to opening, one of the things that had worried me was how the birds would react to this intrusion into their privacy. The blue tits, after an initial fluttering of wings and a bit of circling like planes over Heathrow, decided that they would have to make a dive for it. They grew more confident as time progressed, and, by the end of the day, they were totally ignoring the people. The robins up in the grove, however, had a different reaction. They flew around in annoyance and when some of the children decided that the steps up one side and down the other side of the grove provided an area for them to run through, the robins went berserk. They screeched and flapped around in anger, so much so that one woman said to me in dismay, “Those robins will attack someone.”

  Carla Blake, the Irish Examiner columnist, who happened to be in the garden at the time, took me aside and said quietly, “Put up a sign on the steps of the grove: ‘No entry—Birds nesting’.”

  I did as this wise woman told me and the robins calmed down, having got their grove back.

  It was a very sociable event, and the fact that it was a lovely sunny day added to the enjoyment. People were able to stand and chat, exchanging gardening ideas. Some visitors enjoyed themselves so well that they stayed for hours. But one visitor went home with more than happy memories. I had very carelessly forgotten to take in my Felco pruner off the back windowsill, only to find afterwards that it had “walked”. It had been a birthday present from Gabriel about which we had had a lot of laughs because he was surprised that a pruner could cost so much. It was the sentimental attachment that I had for the pruner that made the loss so hurtful. So if you are reading this and you have my Felco pruner, please drop it back through my letterbox!

  When we closed the gate after the last visitor, there was not a scrap of litter to be seen, which said a lot for the gardening fraternity. We all retreated to the kitchen and had tea and a post mortem. During those two days we had a lot of fun, but we had also made €6,000 for the church. Now I could look up at the steeple and not feel guilty!

  CHAPTER 12

  The Unveiling

  For generations a fire had glowed in the forge at the western end of our village. As you pass over the bridge, leaving the village behind, the road branches right to Bandon and left to Kinsale; there, in the elbow of the junction, nestled the forge. Behind it rose the majestic trees of Dromkeen Wood where a stream tumbled down the slope into the Bandon river. It was a landmark on the road to West Cork and probably one of the last authentic forges in Ireland. People could see through the forge doorway the warm glow of the fire, and outside it the wiry figure of Billy, wearing his leather apron and tweed cap, bent over the hoof of a horse. But in 1992 Billy, our last blacksmith, died and with him went a whole way of life. The corner that had been alive with the sound of the anvil and the sight of prancing horses became a silent place.

  On the hill behind the forge, peering down through the trees, rose the gaunt ruin of Corr Castle. Generations of village children had played in the ruins of this castle and we thought that eventually it would be left like so many other historical sites to fall down and disappear. But since he was a child Richard Good Stephenson, whose ancestors had built the castle, had had a dream. He, too, had played in the ruins and had called to the forge where Billy had dried out his wet shoes with hot coals. In later life he had set up a restoration firm for old buildings in England where he gained much valuable expertise. He returned to Ireland with a skilled workforce and began restoring Corr Castle—a slow, painstaking procedure in which every original detail was preserved or recreated to bring the castle back to its former glory.

  In the meanwhile, beneath Corr Castle the old forge nestled silently at the foot of the hill, and some of us hoped that Billy, who had worked there all his life, would be commemorated in some way. In addition to shoeing horses, Billy had fixed children’s tricycles and wheelbarrows, and the forge had been a waiting point for the bus and a meeting place for everybody. His forge provided a social centre for farmers and members of the racing fraternity, and all aspects of the horse world were discussed in there. Billy was also an enthusiast for greyhounds and was part of the large greyhound racing group in the parish. As he knew so much about the seed, breed and generation of local families, the forge had been a centre of genealogical enquiry and one of the focal points of parish life. Now it was gone, but many felt that it would be good to have it remembered in some way. It soon struck us that a sculpture of a blacksmith was the obvious choice.

  Fate stepped in when a well-known sculptor came to live in the parish. Don Cronin had among his many creations the bull in Macroom, Eamon Kelly in Kerry, Sarah Curran in Newmarket and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington in Kanturk. To have him living in our parish put wings under the dream of a sculpture at the forge. At the same time, the National Roads Authority (NRA) was doing a big job on the main road through the village, and we thought that we would get funding through a scheme that provided for 1 per cent of the cost of public projects to go to appropriate arts initiatives. This would have helped wonderfully to finance a sculpture. However, we discovered to our great disappointment that we were mistaken in our hopes of the scheme. Nevertheless, by the time we discovered that we were mistaken, the idea of the sculpture had taken root. We had the sculptor and we had the site: all we needed was €25,000. We were so confident that we could raise the money that we told Don to begin work on the sculpture.

  The main source of our finance would have to be the equestrian fraternity from all around the country. We hoped that they would see this as an opportunity to acknowledge the contribution of blacksmiths to the racing industry. It would be difficult to fundraise in the parish, where collections for the church were in full flight. Nevertheless, we let it be known that any contributions would be welcome. Billy had served the farmers and horse industry well, both within and outside the parish, and we hoped that it was not forgotten.

  We set up a fund called “Friends of the Forge”, which was initiated with €4,000 of Candlelight money. We applied for every grant we thought might be available and became expert at filling out forms. Then we wrote to all the top names in the horse industry; most of them came good, including one former taoiseach who sent us a cheque for €500; a big-hearted Dublin writer did likewise. Our single biggest donation came from a stables within the parish which donated €1,000. Families who had long associations with the forge joined together and pooled their donations, and two young brothers gave us €1,000 between them.

  Fundraising is always full of surprises. Any day we received a good cheque in the post we were delighted, but when we got a polite suggestion that there were grants available for such things we did not feel so good. From some state bodies to which we had applied for grants
we received polite suggestions of other more suitable departments to which we might apply. Eventually, Cork County Council came up trumps: first with a €2,000 grant and then we qualified under a European scheme for a grant of €12,000.

  Richard Good Stephenson had begun to restore the forge building as a fitting background for the sculpture. Things were looking good.

  Meanwhile, not far from the forge, Don was working on Billy. After a few months, Paddy, an old friend and neighbour of Billy’s, and I were invited to go to view the work in progress. When we entered the workshop we gasped in amazement. Billy was standing there looking at us. It was uncanny. Don had captured the very essence of the man. He asked Paddy if he had got it right and, to his amusement, Paddy told him that Billy wore his cap further back on his head. The next step for Billy was to be brought to the foundry in Dublin to be bronzed. The next step for us was to work out a date for the unveiling.

  Returning from a book signing on the mellow evening of the last Saturday in October, I decided to walk over to the forge to see how things were progressing. As I came across the bridge, an amazing sight met my eyes. Billy was suspended high above the forge on the tip of Liam Connolly’s digger, and very slowly he was being lowered into position. On the ground, Don and Paddy were directing operations. Don had the positioning worked out to the last fraction of an inch, and with meticulous precision the sculpture was eased carefully onto a precise spot on the limestone plinth. Liam had the control of his huge machine so finely tuned that he could move chess pieces. Finally Billy, with his anvil and sledge, was back in his own place. At the forge corner a second dream was being realised.

  During the week before the unveiling, the sculpture was wrapped in black plastic, and on Sunday morning we peeled it off and replaced it with an elegant red cloak. After all, nobody would come to a big event in black plastic, especially if you were the guest of honour. An hour before the unveiling, cars began to park all around the forge corner, down the Quay road, up Colony Hill and all along the village. But we had no confusion as Gabriel with a group of locals well accustomed to parking cars kept everything running smoothly. A huge crowd gathered around the restored forge. The guest speaker was an old friend of the family and when a light shower began to sprinkle us he sought divine intervention and the rain stopped immediately. We were pretty impressed but it came as no surprise to Fr Power.

  Billy’s sister cut the ribbon, the red cloak flowed to the ground and Billy was revealed in all his detail. People gasped in amazement and then stood back and surveyed him. Some of the men walked around him as if they were buying a thoroughbred. There was unanimous agreement that it was perfect. When you put something up for public appraisal there is nearly always some know-all who thinks things should be better. On that day there were none—which was probably the third miracle at that corner!

  CHAPTER 13

  Quacking Time

  Do you sometimes wake up in the morning feeling that you could put your head under the pillow and wish that the day would go away? Well, not so with our new residents who last year moved into the grotto at the end of the village. For years the grotto had just two saintly residents who lived in splendid isolation—the Blessed Virgin and St Bernadette. These two holy women had been brought there by Aunty Peg, who went into Neffs of Cork in the late 1950s and had them made to measure. An adjacent householder had given them a free site, and it was a perfect home for them because that end of our village, called The Rock, provides an ideal location for the Blessed Virgin, who from her high vantage point, a stream flowing at her feet, can overlook the village.

  Every summer in the past, a procession of praying people came down the hill and along the village from St Mary’s Church to fill the grotto with prayers and incense. Those were the days when the traffic through our village generated only a gentle hum and we could move easily between the occasional cars. The Celtic Tiger was just a cub then, but with the progress of years he grew into a formidable force. He took control of our roads and roared through our village; the faint hum of the occasional car accelerated into the thundering rumble of 30,000 vehicles per day. This rendered meandering devotional processions out of the question, and the grotto was no longer a place of pilgrimage.

  Then something happened to change matters. Baby ducks were introduced to the grotto, which with its grassy slopes and flowing stream was an ideal location for them. It once again became a place of pilgrimage, as people come to feed the new residents. Now, instead of the sound of praying voices we had the quacking of ducks, and the wonderful smell of incense was replaced by the pungent odour of the duck house.

  The ducks were a celebration of new life and they welcomed the day with an exuberance that was contagious. When you opened the duck-house door in the morning, the occupants quacked with delight and rushed out, spreading their wings, and ran across the grass, covering themselves in a shower of sparkling dew. Then they peered down into the stream with screeches of anticipation. They tumbled down the stony path, some of them head over heels, so overcome with excitement at the prospect of getting into the gurgling water. There they plunged and flapped with quacks of exhilaration. They swam up and down, twirling around like brown ballerinas. Sometimes they did head-stands and pushed their heads down into the depths, leaving only their bobbing tails above the surface. They seemed so happy to be alive! Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought to myself, if we were all as exuberant as the grotto ducks? Just watching them would make you feel good.

  The Blessed Virgin kept a motherly eye on them, and as they waddled around Bernadette she must surely have been glad of their presence because before she became a saint she was of peasant stock and probably grew up surrounded by wildlife. Now the ducks quacked around her brown-skirted kneeling figure. Their days were spent swimming up and down the stream, and then they came out to investigate the grassy slopes of the grotto for stray flies and slugs; when the search was over, they stretched out in the warm sun. When the rain came and caused us humans to complain, the ducks welcomed it with quacks of delight. Sometimes hot or cold will not please us humans but the ducks were accepting and happy for everything that might come their way.

  The world of the wild duck is fraught with the danger of otters, mink, rats and foxes, but ducks live in the “now”. It is as if they believe the story of the lilies in the field. However, their friends, John and James, did not share the same faith as the ducks so they wired the little bridge below the grotto because we thought that it was up from the river the mink would come to attack our ducks. It was a terrible tragedy for the wildlife of Ireland when, with the cessation of mink farming, these black demons were let loose along our rivers where they indiscriminately kill our native species. It is to be hoped that with the increase of the otter life along the rivers these merciless killers will be naturally overcome.

  In the event, the killer did not come up from the river but one night came downstream and killed six of our ducks, taking two and leaving four dead bodies. So then we wired the upper end to prevent entry from above. To make doubly sure, we laid mink traps under the bridge and further upstream. We assumed that it was the mink who had somehow got in and wreaked havoc on our duck family, but a young lad who was passing late that night, hearing a hullabaloo inside the wall, looked in and chased away what he judged to be an otter. A man from Bandon fisheries assured us that it had the trade mark of a mink rather than an otter, but irrespective of what it was, keeping our duck family safe was proving to be a difficult task. The natural food chain is a very difficult one to put on hold, but for a few weeks our ducks were secure and the full number present and correct every morning.

  Word of the grotto ducks spread around the parish and people came to visit; the ducks gratefully gobbled up any contribution that came their way. The children loved them.

  Then one night a fox discovered that there was a new restaurant at the grotto, and after that he came nightly without any reservation. We were a duck less every morning. Our young ducks needed to be taken off the menu of this
unwelcome visitor. We needed a secure home for our family. Happily the ducks were not victims of the property market, which has gone crazy around Innishannon. Our ducks had a free site in a prime location and the mortgage holders were Our Lady and Bernadette. The builders, John, James and Paddy, came free, and Paddy brought the materials. In a matter of hours, the ducks had a secure refuge at the better end of town. It was made of wire and stakes, and after a week of rain a roof was added to try to maintain some measure of comfort.

  Keeping a duck house dry and clean is a bit like trying to keep out the tide. Ducks are by nature messy and their webbed feet can turn a dry floor overnight into a brown pool. But at least they were safe as we put them in at night under the watchful eye of Our Lady and Bernadette. Now the fox could look but could not touch.

  Then a problem arose that we had never anticipated: sex came to the grotto. It awoke in the young drakes and, as with all young and not so young, its discovery went to their heads and they absolutely lost the run of themselves. They wanted it for breakfast, dinner and supper. Part of the problem was that we had seven drakes and six ducks, so seven into six wouldn’t go; demand exceeded supply and the drakes had to queue up.

  One very wet February morning, when the grotto stream had turned into a roaring torrent, the ducks paraded along the high bank but sensed that below the waters were dangerous and did not attempt to fly in or scramble down the path. However, one fool of a drake with only one thing on his mind chased a duck and, in her efforts to escape from his advances, she fell headlong into the brown, gushing water. She was whipped downstream but before she reached the little bridge she collided with an island of stones and clambered on to it. Two fighting drakes had tumbled in after her, but the roaring waters soon cooled their ardour. They were swirled around, turned upside down and whirled along until they crashed into the base of the path. Grasping at tufts of grass and stones, they finally struggled up to safety.